Why Under Milk Wood is the greatest radio play ever - Telegraph Theatre Why Under Milk Wood is the greatest radio play ever Under Milk Wood took Dylan Thomas nearly 20 tortured years to bring to life. On his centenary, three theatrical productions pay homage to the greatest ever radio drama Dylan Thomas in 1948 Photo: National Portrait Gallery By Jasper Rees 7:00AM GMT 27 Mar 2014 “I’ve finished that infernally eternally unfinished ‘PLAY’ & have done it in New York with actors.” Thus wrote Dylan Thomas to his wife Caitlin of the birth of Under Milk Wood. There seems little room for argument: his “play for voices” is the greatest drama ever written for radio. “It is all about religion, sex and death,” said Richard Burton, the actor whose voice in the famous BBC recording begins at the beginning of Thomas’s rich portrait of a poor community.

“And,” he added, “it is a comic masterpiece.” The characters who populate the fictional village of Llareggub have become household names: the blind old seadog Captain Cat forever mourning his dead love Rosie Probert, the Rev Eli Jenkins greeting each morning in verse, Polly Garter with her list of lost paramours, Mr Pugh who dreams of poisoning Mrs Pugh, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and her two dead husbands, Dai Bread and his two live wives. So it seems odd that there were no drum rolls when Thomas wrote from America to Caitlin after the cast took their inaugural bow in May 1953. Instead, Thomas devoted much of his letter to sweet nothings: his ever-tempestuous wife was feeding small mouths back in the real Laugharne rather than the romanticised one known as Llareggub, while the playwright-poet had embarked on another love affair in New York. In the same letter he implored Caitlin to set aside a month to travel with him to Los Angeles, where he was to work on a libretto for Stravinsky.

Then, just before the play is mentioned in passing, there is a sentence of chilling brevity: “Is my sister dead?” Thomas’s older sister Nancy had indeed died of cancer in Bombay the previous month. Related Articles Dylan Thomas and Igor Stravinsky: an unlikely partnership 10 Feb 2014 So there was much on Thomas’s mind aside from a play which had resisted completion for years. The truth is that Caitlin, never eager to massage her husband’s ego, must have grown impatient with Under Milk Wood’s snail-like progress and the much postponed pay cheque. Under Milk Wood brewed in the cauldron of Thomas’s imagination for more than 20 years. Before he was 20 some of the characters had sprung into being and populated a play – never published – about a Welsh seaside community. By the mid-1930s the word Llareggub, the name Thomas invented by reversing the letters of “bugger all”, was cropping up in short stories.

He applied it variously to a village (in “The Holy Six” and “The Orchards”) and to a “sowfaced woman” in “The Burning Baby”, in which a preacher has sexual relations with his daughter and incinerates the fruit of her womb. So it was already associated in Thomas’s mind with the chapel, transgression and sexuality. As early as 1939 Thomas was heard suggesting that “what Laugharne really needs is a play about well-known Laugharne characters – and get them all to play themselves”. And yet the radio piece “Quite Early One Morning”, clearly a precursor, was inspired by his time living in New Quay in Cardiganshire towards the end of the war, thus seeding the fishing port’s claim to be the real Llareggub. It introduced an antecedent to Polly Garter, serially impregnated by a variety of lovers, and a Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard who, obsessed with cleanliness, will not let the sun in her house until he’s wiped his shoes. In 1948 Thomas’s correspondence alluded (in parenthesis) to what would become Under Milk Wood.

Pitching an article to Picture Post about his sometime home – “I know the little town intimately, and everyone in it” – he added: “(A radio play I am writing has Laugharne, though not by name, as its setting)”. Later that year he reported that he was “getting on with my awful script”. For several years the play was known as "The Town that Was Mad", in which the inhabitants are certified insane and fail to overturn the diagnosis in court, where they are cross-examined by a blind Captain Cat. But the title was negotiable – later Thomas would say the only working title he had was unprintable. That autumn the BBC producer Douglas Cleverdon advised Thomas that the Third Programme had accepted “The Town that Was Mad (or whatever title you prefer)”. Thomas duly submitted 39 pages, adding that he was “very enthusiastic to finish the thing. And quickly.” The pace of composition remained sluggish. An explanation was laid out in a long letter Thomas wrote to his American publisher in Rome in May 1951 (in which he also enclosed a freshly composed poem about his dying father called “Do not go gentle into that good night”).

After a sprightly and lyrical description of a “gay & sad and sentimental and a bit barmy” piece he was working on in verse and prose, he concluded by asking for an advance to allow him to complete it. Four months later he made the same plea to Cleverdon. A Freudian would infer that Thomas’s unconscious sought to impede the play’s progress, because he twice lost the original manuscript before flying to America – once in a Cardiff hotel, then in a Fitzrovia pub. When Thomas arrived in New York in April 1953 his tour manager John Brinnin assigned a minder to ensure Under Milk Wood was ready. Liz Reitell, twice married by her early 30s, soon became Thomas’s lover – and jailer, locking him in a room to ensure its completion – the last lines were finished only minutes before its first multi-cast reading, at the Poetry Centre in New York. The actors were of course American. Thomas had expressed concern that “some kind of approximation to a Welsh accent is required throughout”, but any such anxiety was overruled by pragmatism.

It was in America that he could make money, which is why he returned in the autumn for another tour including further well-received readings of Under Milk Wood. Even though almost all of it was written in England and America, it was a Welsh cast that Thomas had his eye on for his play set in what he called “a never-never Wales”. “When I return some time in December,” Thomas anticipated before that last trip, “I hope that it can be given one or more reading performances… in London; with any luck, I’ll be able to get firstrate [sic] Welsh actors to read it.” It was not to be, of course. Perhaps the most famous thing about Dylan Thomas is the squalor of his passing – in St Vincent’s Hospital in New York on November 9, 1953 at the age of only 39. He spent more than four days in a coma suffering from what was termed “a severe insult to the brain” – alcohol poisoning. There was time enough for Caitlin to fly to his bedside and be promptly removed to a psychiatric clinic.

So the melancholy coda to Under Milk Wood’s 20-year gestation is that Thomas would never hear a Welsh cast perform his final work, and would never be aware of the impact his play would make on the radio. Under Milk Wood was recorded in January 1954, led by the rising West End star Richard Burton. He and Thomas became drinking pals in 1946 when, as Burton awaited demobilisation from the RAF, they both acted in a radio adaptation of David Jones’s In Parenthesis. Burton’s beautiful orotund voice was ideal for the role of First Voice hitherto taken by Thomas, the listener’s guide into the “moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black”. And Under Milk Wood would span his life much as it had Thomas’s. He recorded the role for radio again 10 years later, then starred in the film in 1972 and posthumously appeared on an animation for S4C in 1992. But it is that first BBC recording, created at a time of bible-black mourning, which established the reputation of Under Milk Wood.

The “manic riot” of the poet’s prose was soon hailed by Kenneth Tynan: “He conscripts metaphors, rapes the dictionary and builds a verbal bawdy-house where words mate and couple on the wing, like swifts. Nouns dress up, quite unself-consciously, as verbs, sometimes balancing three-tiered epithets on their heads and often alliterating to boot.” This dizzying chorus of village voices was to be Thomas’s last recorded word. Poignantly, Under Milk Wood was also in the final entry of his collected correspondence, a telegram sent in upper case to a contact in Chicago who wanted to book a reading of the play. “I SHALL BE DELIGHTED TO DO SO WITH OR WITHOUT CAST BUT NOT WITHOUT CASH SOME TIME BETWEEN NOVEMBER 12TH AND NOVEMBER 15TH ON MY WAY TO HOLLYWOOD.” He never made it to Stravinsky’s house. Under Milk Wood - A Chronology - DylanThomas.com Is nothing in this place ever right? WIFE (complacently) No dear. I hope you remembered to change your underclothing. MUSSOLINI I did. And to air my shirt. And do my teeth.

And wash behind my ears. (Under Milk Wood, pxvi) This is, of course, a similar exchange to that between Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and her two ghostly husbands: MR OGMORE I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas MR PRITCHARD I must take my cold bath which is good for me MR OGMORE I must wear my flannel band to ward off sciatica MR PRITCHARD I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron (Under Milk Wood, 11) 1932 Dylan Thomas is living in Swansea. He discusses with his friend Bert Trick the idea of writing a play about a small Welsh seaside town. 1933 Thomas has a written outline of Under Milk Wood, which he reads to Bert and Nell Trick.

In an interview with Colin Edwards, Bert Trick recalls: “He read it to Nell and me in our bungalow at Caswell around the old Dover stove, with the paraffin lamps lit at night … the story was then called Llareggub, which was a mythical village in South Wales, [a] typical village, with terraced houses with one ty bach to about five cottages, and the various characters coming out and emptying the slops and exchanging greetings and so on; that was the germ of the idea which … developed into Under Milk Wood.” (Dylan Remembered Volume 1, page 165) c1934 The name ‘Llareggub’ first used, in the early stories ‘The Orchards’, ‘The Holy Six’ and ‘The Burning Baby’. In ‘The Orchards’ the protagonist Marlais thinks “This was a story more terrible than the stories of the reverend madmen in the Black Book of Llareggub” (Collected Stories, 42). In this story, religion is linked with the mythic Wales of the White Book of Rhydderch and the Black Book of Carmarthen.

In this way it is similar to role of Eli Jenkins’ recording of the past in White Book of Llareggub. (These books have now become ‘The Beige Book of Bollocks’ in a recent play by Phil Bowen, Parlez vous jig jig, which will be performed at the Boat House on 31 August) In ‘The Holy Six’ Llareggub is again associated with the religious: “All through the afternoon they had talked of nothing but the disappearance of the rector of Llareggub” (Collected Stories, 97) In ‘The Burning Baby’ Rhys Rhys’ son, described by his father as a “green stranger”, looks at his sister and thinks: “She was to him as ugly as the sowfaced woman of Llareggub who had taught him the terror of the flesh. He remembered the advances of that unlovely woman. She blew out his candle as he stepped towards her on the night the great hail had fallen and he had hidden in her rotting house from the cruelty of the weather”.

(Collected Stories, 39) 1939 Thomas tells the writer Richard Hughes: “What Laugharne really needs is a play about well-known Laugharne characters – and get them all to play themselves” (Dylan Remembered Volume 2, 75) 1943 Thomas further outlines idea of a mad town plot to Richard Hughes and Constantine Fitzgibbon – the working title of ‘The Town That Was Mad’ lasts for some years 1944/45 Thomas divides his time between London and New Quay, west Wales. He writes the radio script, Quite Early One Morning, which is usually seen as a precursor to Under Milk Wood as its lyricism is much like that of First and Second Voice in Under Milk Wood.

The similarities between them are apparent in the opening lines: “Quite early one morning in the winter in Wales, by the sea that was lying down still and green as grass after a night of tar-black howling and rolling, I went out of the house, where I had come to say for a cold unseasonable holiday, to see if it was raining still, if the outhouse had been blown away, potatoes, shears, rat-killer, shrimp-nets and tins of rusty nails aloft on the wind, and if all the cliffs were left.” (Collected Stories, 299) The verse at the end is also comparable with Under Milk Wood, as can be seen in the following excerpt: “I am Captain Tiny Evans, my ship was the Kidwelly And Mrs Tiny Evans has been dead for many a year. ‘Poor Captain Tiny all alone’, the neighbours whisper, But I like it all alone, and I hated her.” (Collected Stories, 302) Quite Early One Morning also has a character called Mrs Ogmore Pritchard with her famous line “And before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes”.

(Collected Stories, 302) Publication of Quite Early One Morning 1946 Thomas broadcasts ‘The Londoner’, the story of 24 hours in the life of a post-war London family. The dialogue and competing voices are comparable to those employed in Under Milk Wood, and the script also has a narrator holding it all together. The Voice of an Expert performs a similar role to the Voice of the Guide Book in Under Milk Wood, and the dialogue between three shoppers waiting in the queue for rations is like that of the neighbours discussing Mr Waldo. 1947 ‘Return Journey’ is written. This powerful and moving radio play charts Thomas’ journey through his blitzed Swansea and is another example of him honing his technique before the completion of Under Milk Wood.

1949 Thomas reads extracts from what was to become Under Milk Wood at a party in Prague 1950 The first half of Under Milk Wood sent to the BBC under the title The Town That Was Mad October 1951 Thomas writes at length about Under Milk Wood in a letter to Marguerite Caetani “…the idea that I write a piece, a play, an impression for voices, an entertainment out of the town I live in, and to write it simply and warmly and comically, with lots of movement and varieties of moods, so that, at many levels, through sight and speech, description and dialogue, evocation and parody, you come to know the town as an inhabitant of it.” (Collected Letters, 904) April 1952 The first half of Under Milk Wood is published in Marguerite Caetani’s Botteghe Oscure May 1952 Thomas reads a part of the play at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. This was not recorded. 3 May 1953 Thomas gives a solo reading of some of Under Milk Wood at the Poet’s Theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was not recorded.

14 May 1953 The first stage performance of Under Milk Wood, at the Poetry Center, NY. Liz Reitell recalled: “The curtain was going to rise at 8.40. Well, at 8.10 Dylan was locked in the back room with me. And no end to Under Milk Wood. He kept saying “I can’t, I simply can’t do this.” I said “You can, the curtain is going to go up.” Strangely enough, he wrote the very end of Under Milk Wood then and there, and he wrote the lead-up to it. He would scribble it down, I would copy it, print it so that the secretary could read it, hand it to John Brinnin, and hand it to the secretary, do six copies. We all jumped in a cab finally, and got over to the theatre at half-past eight and handed out the six copies to the actors…” (Dylan Remembered Volume 2, 305) 28 May 1953 The second stage performance at the Kaufmann Auditorium, New York.

Before this, Dylan’s friend, the writer Ruthven Todd, recalled how Dylan continued to work on the play: “Glowering at the world in general, and at the dismalness of my basement, he would take some sheets from Liz. Upon these she had marked his tentative suggestions. Growling, he would try out the new words and the revisions. While doing this he would alter, still dispiritedly, from one voice to another. Thus, according to the character, he might be Captain Cat speaking at one moment, or Rosie Probert, and then quite suddenly, it might be Mrs Organ Morgan or Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, or, sadly, Polly Garter … Each emendation which he had made … had to be considered and weighed in his mouth. If it did not seem right, he would lean forward, his elbows on his knees, the cigarette drooping with the ash falling where it would. He would savour each phrase to the full, speaking slowly and seeming to taste the words.

Then he would experiment with a succession of words until he found one which satisfied him, for the moment at least … If I said something was not clear or did not come over properly, he did not want me to make any suggestions for alteration. He, himself, would throw out different words of phrases, twisting them this way or that, until he found something that he wanted.” (Dylan Remembered Volume 2, 308) 5 October 1953 Thomas gives a solo performance of part of Under Milk Wood at the Tenby Arts Club 15 October The completed script of Under Milk Wood delivered to the BBC’s Douglas Cleverdon and copies made. The original was returned to Thomas, who lost it over the weekend and, before departing for America, told Cleverdon he could keep the original if he found it. A few days later Cleverdon tracked it down to a Soho pub.

24 & 25 October 1953 Under Milk Wood performed at the Poetry Center, New York 9 November Dylan Thomas dies at St Vincent’s Hospital, New York Late 1953 Memorial performance of Under Milk Wood in New York 24 January 1954 Richard Burton and others perform extracts from Under Milk Wood at a gala for the Dylan Thomas Memorial Fund at the Globe Theatre, London 25 January 1954 First radio broadcast of Under Milk Wood in the UK. Burton is First Voice 1954 Under Milk Wood published in book form. 13,000 copies are sold in the first month, 53,000 in the first year, and by 1956-57 it had generated an income of £16,043. 1957 BBC Television Performance of Under Milk Wood 1961 Douglas Cleverdon sells his manuscript of Under Milk Wood to the Times Book Company for £2,000. It is said to have later changed hands for five times as much.

March 1966 Caitlin Thomas sues for the return of the original manuscript of Under Milk Wood, & loses 1968 Under Milk Wood translated into Welsh by T. James Jones as Dan Y Wenallt 1971 Andrew Sinclair’s film of Under Milk Wood is made, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole, and filmed in Fishguard 1988 A musical version recorded by Sir George Martin, the Beatles’ producer. With Anthony Hopkins, Tom Jones and many others 1998 First annual Dylan Thomas Festival held at the Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea. 2003 New BBC recording retaining the voice of Burton but with a new cast. 2003 Hundreds of versions of Under Milk Wood are performed all over the world to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Dylan’s death 2004 Fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Under Milk Wood, which has never been out of print. 2006 It is estimated that Under Milk Wood has been translated into at least 30 languages to date.

2008 Reissue of animated Under Milk Wood 2012 Swansea’s first Under Milk Wood Day Dylan Thomas – Collected Letters edited by Paul Ferris (London: Dent, 2000 (new edition)) Dylan Thomas – Collected Stories (London: Phoenix, 2000) Dylan Thomas – Under Milk Wood (London: Penguin Classics, 2000) Dylan Remembered Volume 1 – the Colin Edwards Tapes edited by David N. Thomas (Bridgend: Seren, 2003) Dylan Remembered Volume 2 – the Colin Edwards Tapes edited by David N. Thomas (Bridgend: Seren, 2004) This post is also available in: Welsh UNDER MILK WOOD | Andrew Sinclair's film of the classic play for voices by Dylan Thomas Andrew Sinclair's film of the classic play for voices by Dylan Thomas Search “To begin at the beginning…” – Dylan Thomas Legendary cinema icons Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole star in the screen adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ classic radio play. It takes place in a small Welsh harbour village, passing from night to day.

The film was very well received after its opening in 1971 at the Venice Festival. As Richard Burton said: “It is all about religion, sex and death – and it is a comic masterpiece.” ‘Among the Debrett of Welsh actors’ and David Jason, the film also stars Glynis Johns and Victor Spinetti – Angharad Rees, dreaming deep of her wedding – And Captain Cat, remembering his past love, the dead Rosie Probert. The American Press was excellent. To promote the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas in 2014, Andrew Sinclair toured England and Wales with his film of Under Milk Wood. He spoke at festivals, cultural centres, at university towns and cities, particularly those with media centres, where he talked on turning plays and novels into films. The tour ended in Fishguard, location for this magical film.

Tom Jones, Michael Sheen in Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood - BBC News BBC News Tom Jones, Michael Sheen in Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood 17 April 2014 Close share panel Media captionDylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood over a 10-year period Sir Tom Jones, Sian Phillips and Michael Sheen are named in an all-star cast for a new BBC Wales TV adaptation of Dylan Thomas's play Under Milk Wood. Featured locations include the poet's favourite pubs in New York and west Wales where he wrote his "play for voices" over a 10 year period. Next month's show marks the centenary of Swansea-born Thomas's birth and 60 years since the play's BBC radio debut. National Theatre Wales will also stage a related live event at Laugharne. It was wonderful to be involved in a project celebrating such a great Welshman Katherine Jenkins, on playing Polly Garter Since its first broadcast on radio, Under Milk Wood's tale of the residents of the fictional Welsh village of Llareggub has been adapted as a popular stage play, an opera, and a film version in 1972 starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Sir Tom Jones will play the role of Captain Cat with Sheen among several famous names playing First and Second Voice, including Matthew Rhys, Griff Rhys Jones and John Rhys Davies. Jonathan Pryce will appear alongside Sian Phillips as Mr and Mrs Pugh, with singers Katherine Jenkins and Charlotte Church in the cast as Polly Garter and Mrs Ogmore Pritchard respectively. Ioan Gruffudd will play Mog Edwards while the Rev Eli Jenkins will be portrayed by opera star Bryn Terfel. Katherine Jenkins said: "It was wonderful to be involved in a project celebrating such a great Welshman. "It's also been such a joy to collaborate with so many other Welsh artists whom I respect and admire.

I hope the results are a fitting tribute." Image caption Reflections on Dylan Thomas: Sir Tom Jones heads an all-star cast for a TV version of Under Milk Wood Image caption Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood as a 'play for voices' Image copyright Carmarthenshire council Image caption Thomas spent the last four years of his life in the coastal Welsh village of Laugharne The 60-minute TV drama will open with actors Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Matthew Rhys connecting via their laptops in Brown's Hotel, Laugharne, and the White Horse Tavern in New York before Michael Sheen enters as First Voice. Executive producer Bethan Jones said: "It's been an enormous privilege to work with such an extraordinary ensemble of Welsh talent for this unique presentation of Dylan Thomas' play, and an amazing experience to witness how this familiar text feels fresh and alive when read with truth and simplicity by this wonderful cast." National Theatre Wales will also present a live theatre experience in Laugharne from 3-5 May called Raw Material: Llareggub Revisited , created by Marc Rees and writer Jon Tregenna.

The company previously staged an outdoor production of The Passion in Port Talbot over Easter 2011, starring Sheen as Jesus Christ. Under Milk Wood will be shown on BBC One Wales and the BBCiPlayer in early May as the culmination of a season of programmes celebrating Dylan Thomas's centenary. Image copyright (C) British Broadcasting Corporation Image caption The poet's old drinking haunt in the Carmarthenshire village will feature in the TV production Under Milk Wood (1972) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error This is a delightful if peculiar story of a day in the life of a small, Welsh fishing village called "Llareggub" (read it backwards). We meet a host of curious characters (and ghosts) ...

See full summary » Director: a list of 21 titles created 30 Sep 2011 a list of 23 titles created 10 Nov 2011 a list of 46 titles created 28 Mar 2012 a list of 26 titles created 07 Jan 2014 a list of 29 titles created 31 Aug 2015 Title: Under Milk Wood (1972) 6.2/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Explores the confrontation between the woman who has everything, including emptiness, and a penniless poet who has nothing but the ability to fill a wealthy woman's needs. Director: Joseph Losey The Faust legend retold (loosely) and applied to a mentally disturbed patient in a hospital run by a doctor of dubious sanity himself. The patient (Burton) offers the innocent orderly (... See full summary » Director: Peter Ustinov A man sells his soul to the devil in order to have the woman he loves.

Directors: Richard Burton, Nevill Coghill Stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Andreas Teuber A free-spirited single mother forms a connection with the wed headmaster of an Episcopal boarding school in California. Director: Vincente Minnelli A penniless woman meets a strange girl who insists she is her long-lost mother, and becomes enmeshed in a web of deception, and perhaps madness, in this powerful psychological thriller. Director: Joseph Losey The venomous and amoral wife of a wealthy architect tries, any way she can, to break up the blossoming romance between her husband and his new mistress; a good-natured young widow who holds a dark past. Director: Brian G. Hutton Brutish, fortune-hunting scoundrel Petruchio tames his wealthy, shrewish wife, Katharina. Director: Franco Zeffirelli A cynical Welsh hotel owner secretly romances a diplomat's wife in Haiti under the violent reign of the despot "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Director: Peter Glenville Fog delays a group of travelers headed for New York. They wait at the V.I.P. lounge of London Airport, each at a moment of crisis in his or her life.

Director: Anthony Asquith On a Kenyan safari, white hunter Victor Marswell has a love triangle with seductive American socialite Eloise Kelly and anthropologist Donald Nordley's cheating wife Linda. Director: John Ford A Manhattan call girl has a tragic affair with a rich married man. Director: Daniel Mann Miss Marple comes to solve the mystery when a local woman is poisoned and a visiting movie star seems to have been the intended victim. Director: Guy Hamilton Edit Storyline This is a delightful if peculiar story of a day in the life of a small, Welsh fishing village called "Llareggub" (read it backwards). We meet a host of curious characters (and ghosts) through the 'eyes' of Blind Captain cat. This is a true "Classic" of modern British writing with a wonderful, mischievous use of language. Written by Steve Crook <steve@brainstorm.co.uk> 21 January 1973 (USA) See more » Also Known As: A mi erdőnk alján See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know?

Trivia The budget of $300,000 was underwritten by Richard Burton, as he was so keen to make Dylan Thomas's work available to a wider public. See more » Quotes (Canada NW) – See all my reviews Firstly you must remember that this was originally a play for voices. To fully appreciate this surreal movie you need to listen to a recording of Dylan Thomas' play beforehand. The imagery in the movie totally worked for me. I was familiar with all the characters and was delighted how they were delineated on screen. The only performer I had "issues" with was Peter O'Toole as Captain Cat. He was obviously too young for the part - or his make-up was just not good enough. I enjoyed the way that the 2 Narrators were able to move around the town like ghostly interlopers, observing and describing the behaviour of the denizens. Using voice-over instead of direct speech added to the "other worldliness" feel of the whole. Such a shame that Richard Burton was allowed to monopolize the dialogue - Ryan Davies should have read more lines. Interesting to see Elizabeth Taylor (quite obviously in this due only to Welsh hubby Burton's involvement) playing the part of the popular local village prostitute no less.

(For a sample of the same affection shown to Rosie Probert see "Never On Sunday" (1960) with Melina Mercouri.) Regarding the gratuitous menage-a-trois in the barn - if you view this as a surreal adaptation then the scene fits even though this was never written in the play. A long time ago I read that it was common in these small isolated Welsh villages for the water supply to became contaminated with heavy metals probably due to all the dams that were built in the valleys that prevented the natural flow of water into the local wells. The result was that the local population suffered from a kind of pollution-induced madness. As the UK government provided no funding to find a cure these communities were fenced-in and the inhabitants allowed to live out their natural lives within the confines of their village. It is said that Dylan Thomas' play was describing this type of life. If you decide to watch this movie bear this in mind when considering the eccentricities displayed by the characters. 9 of 11 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Kenneth Tynan on Under Milk Wood: a true comedy of humours | Stage | The Guardian Kenneth Tynan at the Observer Kenneth Tynan on Under Milk Wood: a true comedy of humours In this extract originally published in the Observer on 26 August 1956, Kenneth Tynan finds the first stage adaptation of Dylan Thomas's drama as gripping as it is uneventful Manic riot of prose … Dylan Thomas in a BBC recording studio. Photograph: BBC/PA Close At the theatre: Welsh wizardry Future historians may well pronounce Under Milk Wood (Lyceum, Edinburgh) one of the last outposts of the ear in a period ruled by the eye. But I am not a future historian, and I gaze appalled on those who insist that works meant to be heard should not also be seen: do they, I wonder, go blindfold to symphony concerts? The truth is that all words intended to be spoken gain from the sight of the speaker, which is why I endorse the present experiment.

Watching it, I recalled the fashionable charges against Dylan Thomas's play: that it approaches sex like a dazzled and peeping schoolboy, and that Llaregyb, so far from being a real village, is a "literary" village that Thomas had adorned with a false moustache of lechery – "Cranford" in fact, with the lid off. The characters duplicate one another: Mae Rose Cottage equals Polly Garter, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard equals Mrs Pugh, and Gossamer Beynon equals Myfanwy Price. The end is a perfunctory tapering-off: the town takes twenty-three pages to wake up but is packed off to bed in less than ten. To all these accusations Thomas must plead guilty. Yet we, the jury, rightly acquit him. He talks himself innocent: on two dozen occasions he gets past the toughest guard and occupies the heart. And the manic riot of his prose outdoes even the young O'Casey; he conscripts metaphors, rapes the dictionary and builds a verbal bawdy-house where words mate and couple on the wing, like swifts.

Nouns dress up, quite unself-consciously, as verbs, sometimes balancing three-tiered epithets on their heads and often alliterating to boot. Hopkins with a skinful? Taproom baroque? However we sum up the play's style, it lights up the sky as nothing has since "Juno". Douglas Cleverdon and Edward Burnham have let a large young company loose on the text. Some caricature their roles, revue-fashion, thereby bringing out the worst in Thomas, but many hit the right note of reverent ribaldry, among them William Squire, TH Evans, Diana Maddox and all the children who skip and pout through the kissing game. As the narrator, Donald Houston is as unobtrusive and omnipresent as a good chorus should be, and more exquisitely spoken than one could imagine. Michael Trangmar's multiple setting, though it answers the mechanical questions posed by the play, does so rather grudgingly, in curt visual monosyllables: the decor is ingenious but dull. Yet we are held. Why? Nothing happens. The play is a montage of static snapshots, its only action the movement of the sun across the village.

The characters certainly talk but they seldom converse. Each lives in a cocoon of fantasy which the outside world can hardly penetrate. Organ Morgan, for example, asked whether he prefers Fred Spit to Arthur, unhesitatingly replies: "Oh, Bach without any doubt. Bach every time for me." But is not this the secret? We are gripped, as in comedy we have immemorially been gripped, by a bunch of characters with one-track minds who, though they incessantly collide with one another, never make real contact. Not less than "Bartholomew Fair", "Under Milk Wood" is a true comedy of humours. Next week: Tynan on Spring Awakening Dylan Thomas's play for voices is given a pitch-perfect revival by director Terry Hands' ensemble of actors, writes Alfred Hickling Published: 12 Feb 2014 Under Milk Wood Written by Dylan Thomas Sheila Spackman Director's Notes Being of a certain age, I remember the day after he died, the preacher in Chapel asking us to pray for the soul of Somebody-or-other Thomas - and I remember us turning sneakily to each other to ask who the heck was he?

A fortnight later they did his play on the radio but we didn't actually listen to it as it sounded a bit too arty crafty for us but as the years went by, we did hear it. We heard it and read it - and quote it repeatedly. And so my love-hate relationship with Milk Wood started. I have loved it and hated it for twenty seven years now. I have loved the funny sayings and hated purple passages but mostly I have skipped bits of it. On the page and on record I would enjoy a bit of it and then get fed up with it and not finish it. It all seemed a lot of bits and pieces with infuriatingly funny lines and no dramatic necessity for me to want to finish it. I always considered it the last minute ravings of a talented alcoholic, scribbled off quickly before drinking ten whiskies and deservedly dying. In fact I considered it a rag-bag potboiler written for a quick eighty quid and undeservedly successful. I thought like a lot of Shakespeare, people pretended to like it, but actually didn't.

And yet the damned thing wouldn't go away and would perpetually sit there in my Production list of plays to be tackled someday, smug beneath 'Cherry Orchard' and snug above 'Crichton'. And there it has stayed, taken out, half-read, half-dusted and chucked back in again to be vilified and quoted - "Oh it's Dylan, Dylan all the time with you - Bach!". Until I was looking for a script for this December production. I offered this play to the Selection Committee for two reasons. I wanted to do a play that everyone could be in it that wanted to. And so it is this evening - and I wanted to have a go at solving the Milk Wood Mystery. Is it a good play? Is it really worth doing? Is it a play as all in fact? And all the other questions.

Well I write this note halfway through out investigations - November 7th it is today - and I'll tell you this - I think it's brilliantly well made, it's the opposite of a rag-bag, it's a two-toned diamond, it's packed with struggle and drama, full of Life Wish and Death Wish and if it comes out twee and bitty then it's cos we haven't got it yet! This is one of the most annoying, infuriating, brilliant scripts I've had a go at yet. I hope we all finish up pleased with it. In the belief that this play was written to exploit the imaginations of the audience, this production deliberately reverts to the author's earlier intentions. John Scadding The News F.N. Bench gives a controlled performance The dreams, fears and memories of a small Welsh town came to Havant last night in the Bench Theatre's production of Dylan Thomas's 'Under Milk Wood' at Havant Arts Centre. The play which captures a day in the life of the seaside town of Llaregyb, proved a difficult task for the Players, who overcame the restrictions of the intense poetic dialogue and brought rhythmic fluidity in the longer descriptive sequences.

There is no single plot to the work. Instead, Thomas' narrative presents a wide spectrum of characters, each with his or her own story. Director John Scadding controlled the peaks and lulls in the script allowing the cast to develop the vivid Thomas caricatures such as Captain Cat, Nogood Boyo, and Lord Cut Glass, without letting the players take the characterizations too far. Even in parts where the production seemed slow, the cast worked hard to so justice to the heavy script. In its best moments 'Under Milk Wood' came alive with vitality and eloquence. A well deserved credit should be paid to Nicola Scadding who found both tenderness and strength in her role as narrator. Strong performances came from Tony Adams as the blind Captain Cat and Gill Sawyer who handled the transition between her three characters with expertise. The tiered set, which was designed and constructed under the supervision of Chris Shaw, gave actors the freedom to make even the most subtle movement as effective as the incredible romping children sequence in which 16 players leap about in a schoolyard game. 'Under Milk Wood' was first produced as a reading by Dylan Thomas in New York in 1953.

The Bench Theatre's production is based on a longer version of the play which was written for radio. Under Milk Wood' will be presented at Havant Arts Centre, East Street tonight and tomorrow night and on December 11, 12 and 13. The News, 5th December 1980 Dylan Thomas - Dylan Thomas Biography - Poem Hunter Dylan Thomas - Dylan Thomas Biography - Poem Hunter Videos Biography of Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works. His best-known works include the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night". Appreciative critics have also noted the craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my Craft or Sullen Art", and the rhapsodic lyricism in "And death shall have no dominion" and "Fern Hill".

Early Life Dylan Thomas was born in the Uplands area of Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales, on 27 October 1914 just a few months after the Thomas family had bought the house. Uplands was, and still is, one of the more affluent areas of the city. His father, David John ('DJ') Thomas (1876–1952), had attained a first-class honours degree in English at University College, Aberystwyth, and was dissatisfied with his position at the local grammar school as an English master who taught English literature. His mother, Florence Hannah Thomas (née Williams) (1882–1958), was a seamstress born in Swansea. Nancy, Thomas's sister, (Nancy Marles 1906–1953) was nine years older than he. Their father brought up both children to speak only English, even though he and his wife were both bilingual in English and Welsh. 'DJ' was even known to give Welsh lessons at home. Dylan is pronounced 'd?lan in Welsh, and in the early part of his career some announcers introduced him using this pronunciation.

However, Thomas himself favoured the anglicised pronunciation /'d?l?n/. A review of a biography by Andrew Lycett (2004) notes: "Florence, the boy’s mother, had her doubts about the odd name: the correct Welsh pronunciation, which the family used, is “Dullan,” and she worried that other children would tease him by calling him “dull one.” Later, when broadcasting on the Welsh service of the BBC, Dylan Thomas had to instruct the announcers to say "'Dillan,' the way he himself pronounced it". His middle name, Marlais, was given to him in honour of his great-uncle, Unitarian minister William Thomas, whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles. His childhood was spent largely in Swansea, with regular summer trips to visit his maternal aunts' Carmarthenshire farms. These rural sojourns and the contrast with the town life of Swansea provided inspiration for much of his work, notably many short stories, radio essays, and the poem Fern Hill. Thomas was known to be a sickly child who suffered from bronchitis and asthma. He shied away from school and preferred reading on his own.

He was considered too frail to fight in World War II, instead serving the war effort by writing scripts for the government. Thomas's formal education began at Mrs. Hole's Dame school, a private school which was situated a few streets away on Mirador Crescent. He described his experience there in Quite Early One Morning: Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over undone sums, or to repent a little crime — the pulling of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during English literature. In October 1925, Thomas attended the single-sex Swansea Grammar School, in the Mount Pleasant district of the city, where his father taught. He was an undistinguished student. Thomas's first poem was published in the school's magazine. He later became its editor. He began keeping poetry notebooks and amassed 200 poems in four such journals between 1930 and 1934.

He left school at 16 to become a reporter for the local newspaper, the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave the job under pressure 18 months later in 1932. After leaving the job he filled his notebooks even faster. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these first years. He then joined an amateur dramatic group in Mumbles called Little Theatre (Now Known as Swansea Little Theatre), but still continued to work as a freelance journalist for a few more years. Thomas spent his time visiting the cinema in the Uplands, walking along Swansea Bay, visiting a theatre where he used to perform, and frequenting Swansea's pubs. He especially patronised those in the Mumbles area such the Antelope Hotel and the Mermaid Hotel. A short walk from the local newspaper where he worked was the Kardomah Café in Castle Street, central Swansea. At the café he met with various artist contemporaries, such as his good friend the poet Vernon Watkins. These writers, musicians and artists became known as 'The Kardomah Gang'. In 1932, Thomas embarked on what would be one of his various visits to London.

In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the German Luftwaffe in a "three nights' blitz". Castle Street was just one of the many streets in Swansea that suffered badly; the rows of shops, including the 'Kardomah Café', were destroyed. Thomas later wrote about this in his radio play Return Journey Home, in which he describes the café as being "razed to the snow". Return Journey Home was first broadcast on 15 June 1947, having been written soon after the bombing raids. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded: "Our Swansea is dead". The Kardomah Café later reopened on Portland Street, not far from the original location Career and Family It is often commented that Thomas was indulged like a child and he was, in fact, still a teenager when he published many of the poems he would become famous for: “And death shall have no dominion" “Before I Knocked” and “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower".

"And death shall have no dominion", appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933 and further work appeared in The Listener in 1934 catching the attention of two of the most senior poets of the day T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender. His highly acclaimed first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published on 18 December 1934, and went on to win a contest run by The Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, which did not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement would later be used by a number of other new authors, including Philip Larkin. His passionate musical lyricism caused a sensation in these years of desiccated Modernism; the critic Desmond Hawkins said it was “the sort of bomb that bursts no more than once in three years”. In all, he wrote half of his poems while living at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive before he moved to London.It was also the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.

In the spring of 1936, Dylan Thomas met dancer Caitlin Macnamara in the Wheatsheaf pub, in the Fitzrovia area of London's West End. They were introduced by Augustus John, who was Macnamara's lover at the time (there were rumours that she continued her relationship with John after she married Thomas). A drunken Thomas proposed to Macnamara on the spot, and the two began a courtship. On 11 July 1937, Thomas married Macnamara in a register office in Penzance, Cornwall. In 1938, the couple rented a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, West Wales. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on 30 January 1939 (d. 2000). Their daughter, Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, was born on 3 March 1943 (d. 2009). A second son, Colm Garan Hart, was born on 24 July 1949.

Wartime and After At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was designated C3, which meant that although he could, in theory, be called up for service he would be in one of the last groups to be so. He was saddened to see his friends enter active service leaving him behind and drank whilst struggling to support his family. He lived on tiny fees from writing and reviewing and borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances, writing begging letters to random literary figures in hope of support, envisaging this as a plan of long term regular income. He wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information asking for employment but after a rebuff eventually ended up working for Strand Films. Strand produced films for the Ministry of Information and Thomas scripted at least five in 1942 with titles such as This Is Colour (about dye), New Towns For Old, These Are The Men and Our Country (a sentimental tour of Britain). He actively sought to build a reputation as a raconteur and outrageous writer, heavy drinker and wit. The publication of Deaths and Entrances in 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic W. J.

Turner commented in The Spectator "This book alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet". Thomas was well known for being a versatile and dynamic speaker, best known for his poetry readings. He made over 200 broadcasts for the BBC. Often considered his greatest single work, Under Milk Wood, a radio play featuring the characters of Llareggub, is set in a fictional Welsh fishing village ('Llareggub' is 'Bugger All' backwards, implying that there is absolutely nothing to do there). The BBC credited their producer Stella Hillier with ensuring the play actually materialised. Assigned "some of the more wayward characters who were then writing for the BBC", she dragged the notoriously unreliable Thomas out of the pub and back to her office to finish the work. The play took several years to write, the first half mostly in South Leigh, Oxford, in 1948, whilst the second half was mostly written in America in May 1953. Fewer than 300 lines were written in Laugharne, according to one account, which also explains the influence of New Quay on the play.

New York John Malcolm Brinnin invited Thomas to New York and in 1950 embarked on a lucrative three month tour of arts centres and campuses in the States. He toured there again in 1952, this time with Caitlin, who discovered that he had been unfaithful on his 1950 trip. They both drank heavily, as if in competition, Thomas's health beginning to suffer with gout and lung problems. Thomas performed a 'work in progress' version of Under Milk Wood solo for the first time on 3 May at Harvard during his early 1953 US tour, and then with a cast at the Poetry Centre in New York on 14 May. He worked on the play further in Wales, where in its completed form it premiered the Lyric Theatre, Carmarthen, Wales on 8 October 1953, just 12 miles away from Laugharne. It was said Thomas gave a 'supreme virtuoso performance'. He then travelled to London and on the 19 October he flew to America. He died in New York on 5 November 1953 before the BBC could record the play.

Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954 and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film. Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 1934–1952, published when he was 38, won the Foyle poetry prize. He wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night", a villanelle, to his dying father, who passed away in 1952, one of the poet's last poems. Death Thomas arrived in New York on 20 October 1953, to take part in a performance of Under Milk Wood at the city's prestigious Poetry Centre. He was already ill and had a history of blackouts and heart problems, using an inhaler in New York to help his breathing. Thomas had liked to boast of his addiction to drinking, saying "An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do." He "liked the taste of whisky" and had a powerful reputation for his drinking. The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicating a performer he was and how the tension would build before a performance: “Would he arrive only to break down on the stage? Would some dismaying scene take place at the faculty party?

Would he be offensive, violent, obscene? These were alarming and yet exciting possibilities.” His wife Caitlin said in her embittered memoir “Nobody ever needed encouragement less, and he was drowned in it.” Thomas “exhibited the excesses and experienced the adulation which would later be associated with rock stars,” however the amount he is supposed to have drunk in his lifetime and in New York before his death, may well have been exaggerated as Thomas became mythologised. On the evening of 27 October 1953, Thomas's 39th birthday, the poet attended a party in his honour but felt so unwell that he returned to his hotel. On 28 October 1953, he took part in Poetry And The Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema 16, which included panellists Amos Vogel, Maya Deren, Parker Tyler, and Willard Maas. The director of the Poetry Centre, John Brinnin, was also Thomas's tour agent. Brinnin didn't travel to New York, remaining at home in Boston and handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell.

Reitell met Thomas at Idlewild Airport (now JFK airport) and he told her that he had had a terrible week, had missed her terribly and wanted to go to bed with her. Despite Reitell's previous misgivings about their relationship they spent the rest of the day and night together at the Chelsea Hotel. The next day she invited him to her apartment but he declined, saying that he was not feeling well and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. After spending the night at the hotel with Thomas, Reitell went back to her own apartment for a change of clothes. At breakfast Herb Hannum noticed how sick Thomas looked and suggested a visit to a Dr. Feltenstein before the performance of Under Milk Wood that evening. The doctor went to work with his needle, and Thomas made it through the two performances of Under Milk Wood, but collapsed straight afterwards. Reitell would later describe Feltenstein as a wild doctor who believed injections could cure anything. A turning point came on 2 November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly and exacerbated chest illnesses, such as Thomas had. By the end of the month, over two hundred New Yorkers had died from the smog.

On 3 November Thomas spent most of that day in bed drinking He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2am. After drinking at the White Horse Tavern, a pub he'd found through Scottish poet Ruthven Todd, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record!" The barman and the owner of the pub who served Thomas at the time later commented that Thomas couldn't have imbibed more than half that amount. Thomas had an appointment to visit a clam house in New Jersey on 4 November. When phoned at the Chelsea that morning, he said that he was feeling awful and asked to take a rain-check. Later, he did go drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, on the third call prescribing morphine, which seriously affected Thomas's breathing. At midnight on 5 November, his breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell unsuccessfully tried to get hold of Feltenstein.

Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at nearby St Vincent's hospital. The medical notes state that he arrived in a coma at 1.58am, and that the "impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response". The duty doctors found bronchitis in all parts of his bronchial tree, both left and right sides. An X-ray showed pneumonia, and a raised white cell count confirmed the presence of an infection. Caitlin in Laugharne was sent a telegram on 5 November, notifying her that Dylan was in hospital. She flew to America the following day and was taken, with a police escort, to the hospital. Her alleged first words were "Is the bloody man dead yet?" The pneumonia worsened and Thomas died, whilst in coma, at noon on 9 November. Poetry Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night. His images were carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations.

Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry he sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life again. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore and preaching, and Freud. Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in poems such as Fern Hill, In Country Sleep, Ballad of the Long-legged Bait or In the White Giant's Thigh from Under Milkwood: Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house and heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost, the scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child: I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance. [...] I fell in love, that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that could be ever. Dylan Thomas's Works: 1952 Collected Poems, 1934–1952 Collected prose 1940 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Dent 1946 Selected Writings of Dylan Thomas, New Directions 1953 Adventures In The Skin Trade And Other Stories (Adventures In The Skin Trade, an unfinished novel).

New Directions 1954 Quite Early One Morning (Planned by Thomas, posthumously published). New Directions 1955 A Child's Christmas in Wales, New Directions 1955 A Prospect of the Sea and other stories and prose writings, Dent 1957 Letters to Vernon Watkins, Dent 1965 Rebecca's Daughters, Triton 1969 The year of love. Drama 1954 Under Milk Wood (Radio play) 1953 The Doctor and the Devils and Other Scripts 1964 The Beach of Falesa (Screenplay) Further reading: collections 1966 Dylan Thomas: a Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Charles B. Cox 1971 The Poems of Dylan Thomas W. W. Norton & Co 1978 A Child's Christmas in Wales illustrated by Edward Ardizzone. 1996: published as Dolphin Paperback from Orion Children's Books 1982 Selected Works, Guild Publishing, London 1984 The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas, New Directions Publishing 1986 Collected Letters. Edited by Paul Ferris.

MacMillan 1992 On the Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts, Ed. Ralph Maud New Directions Publishing 1994 Eight Stories, W. W. Norton & Co 1995 Dylan Thomas: The Complete Screenplays, Ed. John Ackerman. Applause Books 1997 Fern Hill: An Illustrated edition of the Dylan Thomas poem. Red Deer College Press, Canada 2000 Collected Poems 1934-1953, London: Phoenix 2000 Selected Poems London: Phoenix Critical studies A Child's Christmas In Wales One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen. Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, First Edition, Signed - AbeBooks Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, First Edition, Signed You Searched For: Results (1 - 8) of 8 Sort By Published by New Directions, New York (1954) Used Hardcover First Edition Signed Quantity Available: 1 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: New Directions, New York, 1954. Hardcover. First edition. presumed first printing. xiv, [2], 98 p. 21 cm. Frontis Illustration (reproducing photograph of Dylan Thomas by Rollie McKenna).

"The first half of this play was published in an earlier form as Llareggub in Botteghe oscure, IX." First American edition [Rolph B22]. Contains a preface by Welsh composer Daniel Jones, notes on the pronunciation of Welsh names, and the composer's music for the songs. From Wikipedia: "Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include, the "Play for Voices", Under Milk Wood. He became popular in his lifetime and remained so after his premature death in New York City. Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language. He has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century and noted for his original, rhythmic and ingenious use of words and imagery. He remains popular with the public, who find his work accessible." Good. No dust jacket. Signed by previous owner. Cover has some wear and soiling. Some page foxing and discoloration, especially near frontis. Bookseller Inventory # 70611 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Queen's University,, Kingston, Ontario, Canada:, 1971.

THOMAS, Dylan. UNDER MILK WOOD (En El Joven Bosque). A Play for Voices by Dylan Thomas. Traduccion (con la colaboracion de Elwyn L. Thomas), estudio preliminar y notas de Tomas Ramos Orea. Octavo, grey printed wrappers, 74 pages. Inscribed by the translator, Tomas Ramos Orea, on title page, in year of publication: "Para Prof. S- L- cordialmente Tomas Ramos Orea, Alcala de Henares, 1971." Front cover and few pages of text have faint crease at tip of one corner, else a fine copy; business card of Tomas Ramos Orea laid into the book. First edition thus, bilingual edition (with text in English and Spanish), with introduction and notes by Tomas Ramos Orea. Bookseller Inventory # 57538 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Enitharmon Editions/Queen Anne Press, London, 2013. Softcover. Book Condition: Fine. Sir Peter Blake (illustrator). First printing. Enitharmon Editions/Queen Anne Press, London, 2013.

First Printing of this softcover edition limited to 2,500 copies. This copy is also signed by Peter Blake. Published to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas's birth (October 27th 1914). Book condition: fine. Slight scuff marks to front cover. No dust jacket issued. Internationally acclaimed for its eccentricity and lovelorn lyricism, Dylan Thomas's 1954 play for voices, Under Milk Wood, has long echoed in the imagination of the founding father of British Pop Art, Sir Peter Blake. An obsession that has spanned almost thirty years, this 'greenleaved sermon on the innocence of men' has filled the spaces of Blake's studio, played and replayed on broadcast recordings, and has prompted several pilgrimages to Thomas's creative refuge at Laugharne in Carmarthenshire. Revealed here for the very first time alongside Thomas's play text, are the 'dismays and rainbows' of this great artist's richly detailed sequences of 110 watercolours, pencil portraits and collages, comprising one of his most distinctive and significant bodies of work. A wonderful edition for Thomas's centenary year. Signed by the artist. Softcover.

Bookseller Inventory # 1302996 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: London: Queen Anne Press, Enitharmon Editions, 2013. Soft cover. Book Condition: Fine. No Jacket. 1st Edition. A First UK printing thus published by London: Queen Anne Press,Enitharmon Editions in 2013.The BOOK is in FINE unread condition.Publisher's softcover self-wraps:Quarto,pp.175;[1],blank. Printed in colour.

One of only 2500 copies published.This classic work in a brand new letterpress edition,illustrated and introduced by Sir Peter Blake.Published to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas' birth and to celebrate a body of work by Peter Blake.Blake's richly detailed sequence of 110 watercolours, pencil portraits and collages, comprising one of his most distinctive and significant bodies of work.The book has been SIGNED by Sir Peter Blake on the title-page at a literary event in Bath in 2013.Very few copies of this title have been signed.Also accompanied by a set of four postcards published by The National Museum Wales which were printed to accompany the exhibition in Wales.A wonderful item with such attributes.ashtonrarebooks welcomes direct contact.More images available on request.This is a large and heavy book and extra postage costs may be necessary for overseas buyers. Signed by Illustrator(s). Bookseller Inventory # ABE-12987670525 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Dent, UK, 1956. Cloth. Book Condition: Very Good ++. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Very Good. Reprint. Reprint 1956.

Signed by the cast of the 1956 production of the play performed at the New Theatre Haymarket, London. The book is signed to A Teifion Griffiths, who used to own a book shop just around the corner from the New Theatre in Haymarket and a number of the cast used to pop into his shop between rehearsals etc. Having built up a bit of a relationship with Cliff Gordon he asked him to obtain the signatures of the cast in the book. Book is very good++ and bright. Contents good. The complete wrapper is near very good and quite bright. Edges rubbed and nicked. A few small closed tears to edges. Light soiling and age toning to wrapper. More images can be taken upon request. Ref11680 Size: 16mo - over 5¾" - 6¾" tall. Signed. Bookseller Inventory # 013914 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: n.p. n.d., [1954]., [London], 1954. First Edition Manuscript. [Jones, Daniel Jenkyn, OBE]. Dylan Thomas.

[Under Milk Wood] / JOHNNIE CRACK AND FLOSSIE SNAIL. [Words by Dylan Thomas, Music by Daniel Jones]. Quarto, [4to.], n.p. n.d., [1954] 4 pages. On standard music paper. The original hand-written, working music manuscript from Dylan Thomas' 'Under Milk Wood', A Play for Voices. Preface and musical settings by Daniel Jones [1912-1993], the most celebrated Welsh composer. [published by Dent, 1954 in book form]. Daniel Jones, Dylan's oldest friend, wrote the preface and all of the original music for 'Under Milk Wood'. The piece [No 6] is in excellent near fine condition, and is written entirely in Daniel Jones' hand. Originally a radio play, later a stage play, Under Milk Wood was adapted into film with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Dan Jones edited Dylan Thomas's POEMS and published: " My Friend Dylan Thomas". Signed by Author. Bookseller Inventory # 30855 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Enitharmon Editions & Queen Anne Press, UK, 2013. Hardcover.

Book Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: None issued. Peter Blake (illustrator). 1st Edition. Large format illustrated edition - signed by Sir Peter Blake - accompanied by a signed print by the artist. One of only 100 such copies, this is number 21/100. Published to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas' birth and to celebrate a body of work by Peter Blake.'From where you are, you can hear their dreams'. Internationally acclaimed for its eccentricity and lovelorn lyricism, Dylan Thomas' 1954 'play for voices' has long echoed in the imagination of the founding father of British Pop Art, Sir Peter Blake. An obsession that has spanned almost thirty years, this 'greenleaved sermon on the innocence of men' has filled the spaces of Blake's studio, played and replayed on broadcast recordings, and has prompted numerous pilgrimages to Thomas¿ creative refuge at Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. All is ¿strangely simple and simply strange¿ in the sleepy Welsh seaside town of Llareggub, as the dreams, fantasies and realities of its inhabitants unfold across the cycle of one spring day.

At once a lively and humorous account of butchers, bakers, preachers and children, of Captain Cat, Nogood Boyo and Polly Garter ¿ depicted with a ribaldry i'n which Blake delights' it is also a modern pastoral tale on a Chaucerian scale, a quest for purity in a ¿darkest-before-dawn¿ world. Revealed here for the first time alongside Thomas¿ text, are the ¿dismays and rainbows¿ of Blake's richly detailed sequence of 110 watercolours, pencil portraits and collages, comprising one of his most distinctive and significant bodies of work. Signed by Illustrator(s). Bookseller Inventory # 001618

Question: Who wrote the play Under Milk Wood?
Answer: Dylan Thomas